Krakow: Auschwitz-Birkenau & Salt Mine OneDay Tour (hotel pickup)

I have taken many Viator tours, and enjoyed nearly all of them, but this was an appalling experience and pitiful performance by the company. I booked a private tour to the Krakow Salt Mines and Auschwitz-Birkenau on May 18th, with a pickup at 8am at the Stradom Hotel in Krakow. The driver was around 15 minutes late. The driver basically spoke no English and was not able to respond to basic questions. Instead, throughout the drive he shouted into his phone in Polish and then thrust it towards the back seat of the vehicle while a translation program attempted to play back what he was saying, which was often not understandable. While doing this the driver frequently took his eyes off the road, which seemed dangerous, and on a number of occasions he had to jerk the wheel to get us back into the lane. He dropped us off at the salt mine tour and pointed to a building landmark which he told us to walk toward when the tour ended. While the building was visible from where the tour started, the tour ended in a completely different area, 0.2KM away and the building he had pointed to was no longer in site. We spent 20 minutes walking around trying to locate the building. The driver had not provided me with his cell phone number in the event of such circumstances even though I asked for it at the beginning of the tour - he just waved off the request. I later realized that he likely did not understand what I was saying as his English was practically non-existent. The car itself was an old VW van. It did not have any connections to charge one’s phone and while the driver was charging his phone via the cigarette lighter, he did not ask if we needed our devices charged. The car was cluttered and when we pulled up the window sun screen it was badly rusted. There was no water available in the car and when we asked the driver if we could get some water he pointed us to a vending machine. The worst aspect of the car is that the air conditioner was partially broken in that none of the air outlets in the back seat operated. When we asked the driver for air in the back seat he told us (via his translation device) that the air was already on full blast but he did lean down the front passenger seat so there would be better circulation. After we stopped for lunch, the driver acknowledged that the back seat fans/vents were all broken and said that it was probably “a fuse” and that he would try and fix this while we were visiting Auschwitz - but when we finished our tour it was still broken. Again, all this communication was via his translation device which sometimes delivered very fractured translations. On the trip from Krakow to Auschwitz, the driver talked pretty constantly. While he was a nice and friendly man (and I don’t blame him for much of our disappointment) he is clearly in no way qualified as a tour guide and should never have been selected for this task. He pointed out various buildings and areas - some of no real interest - but did not have a deep knowledge of any of them, and prefaced many of his statements with the phrase: “I read on the Internet that this place . . .” When the driver was not pointing out this building or that, he spent the rest of his time expounding on various of his political views and conspiracy theories, of which he had many. The various topics he addressed at some length included: (i) the war in Ukraine; (ii) Vladimir Putin; (iii) U.S. assistance to Ukraine; (iv) whether Putin is actually dead and a “doppelgänger” has taken his place (it’s true! “I saw it on some TV show”); (v) whether Hitler actually died in Germany at the end of WWII or survived and made his way to South America (he did! “I read it on the Internet”); (vi) whether aliens live among us (they do!); and (via) whether the U.S. has possession of an alien spaceship (they do!) and have designed their own aircraft based on this alien ship (they have!). We decided for a private tour as opposed to a large group, as a large group often slows you down and you often get a much better guide. But this was in every way worse than a large group tour. It was not more efficient (we had way too much time between stops and the tickets had been purchased for times that could easily have been much earlier), the driver had no relevant information about anything a tourist would be interested in, the driver’s vehicle was much worse than the typical larger tourist coach or van, we did not feel safe as the driver was talking, translating and distracted during the trip, and it all of this cost twice as much. I think Viator needs to rectify this situation, particularly for a repeat customers. I would prefer to keep this a private matter but I do have video of the driver “translating while driving” and photos of the vehicle (including the rusty shade) that I can share in a Trip Advisor review if something isn’t done. Thank you.

Our driver was Marrioush, he was excellent, very informative and polite, I would highly recommend him.

The trip was well organised and our driver, Gregor, made sure we were looked after. The Auschwitz tour is very sad but one that everybody should see. The tour guide was very respectful and informative. The Salt Mines are amazing. Fantastic to see. Good to combine both tours when you’re short on time in Krakow. Highly recommended.